Emotional literacy is essential reading for parents, teachers and carers of children who have a deep commitment to the happiness of children and to educational processes that enliven childrens hearts, minds and souls and which create holistic learning communities. It is literacy for the whole child, not simply the childs mind. This is literacy for the feeling life, and it provides languages for the heart, which is at the centre of the wellbeing of each of us and especially our children. Designed to turn classrooms into heart spaces, Emotional literacy offers a range of non-verbal and specific artistic exercises that gives children the tools and languages to explore and manage their feelings. These exercises work because they are centred within a childs body and this overcomes the problem of the child knowing what the right behaviour is, but feeling unable to do it in challenging situations. Children learn to identify the basic emotions of childhood: anger, fear, grief and loss, and aloneness in their bodies. They acquire tools to manage these emotions and to transform them into peace, safety, joy and connectedness with simple expressive exercises using sound, colour, movement, gesture, clay, sand and sensing. The exercises are tailored for use with the individual child or for group activities. The model is designed to create an emotionally self-managing classroom in the long term. A place where the children identify their feelings and can move to a corner of the classroom designed specifically for them and where they can work through a particular feeling whether it is anger, grief and loss, fear or aloneness. This book will be of interest to all teachers and parents who feel that they need fresh inspiration when working with the escalating problems of bullying, both from the experience of the child being bullied and the child doing the bullying. Here are body-based, non-verbal exercises that can make a difference to a childs experience very quickly. Emotional literacy promises a brighter future: for as children grow into adults they have tools to deal with their anger so that adult violence and abuse is minimised; they have processes for dealing with their grief and loss so that the incidence of depression may be reduced; they have tools to deal with their fear so that anxiety and stress in their adult lives may be minimised and; they have processes for reconnecting with meaning so that the despair arising from aloneness need not be their journey. We are on the verge of a Brave New World where those who flourish will be those who read their hearts stories and use holistic processes to transform difficult and challenging emotions into courageous and flourishing lives. Emotional Literacy: The heart of classroom management lays the foundation stone for a healthy future for our children."--Provided by publisher.